Shuffle
by notbang
Summary: Life is like a game of Blackjack; one way or another, the house always wins. Sometimes, you just have to know when to cut your losses.


**Shuffle**

**Summary: **Life is like a game of Blackjack; one way or another, the house always wins. Sometimes, you just have to know when to cut your losses.

**Rating: **PG13

**Genre:** Angst/Drama

_[Ace, King, Queen, Jack, __ten to two__ and it's the luck of the draw.]_

The air was cool and sharp against the hole in her abdomen. Thick and viscous, like honey, her life trickled down her side, spilling onto the concrete, and there was nothing she could do to save herself.

She'd always been a lost cause.

_[Four suits, four kingdoms, four separate battles and she wondered if anyone knew who was fighting who anymore.]_

She'd played life like a game of solitaire. Every man for his own; look out for numero uno at all times. Along the way, others had come and gone, each bearing some importance to her existence, but her primary concern had always been survival. Surviving was on a whole different plane to living, though; just because your heart was still beating didn't mean you could feel. Didn't mean you got to be happy as well as hurt.

_[Clubs and spades were weapons of the warriors. Hearts and diamonds were those of the dreamers. But sometimes, looking good wasn't enough. Clubs and spades didn't last forever and hearts got broken too. Diamonds never did but they were rare and didn't feel.] _

No one had ever really understood her. Not that she'd advised trying.

_If you don't understand me; don't underestimate me. But definitely don't trust me._

Her world had been of darkness, her world had been one of deceit; lies and nothing other than lies. You want it, you work for it. You work for it, you eventually lose it. Nothing was ever worth it.

Nothing, except maybe pouring your heart and soul into doing a little good after a lifetime of working in hell and reporting directly to Lucifer himself.

_[Whichever way you looked at it, everyone was losing out in the long run.]_

Lyle had told her things, the scheming little bastard. Gloated, in his on smug way. Future plans. Have you seen baby bro lately, sis? No, I'm sorry, he'd said. You wouldn't know. Raines has got big plans for him…

_[It's a table of deceit. A sea of cards and everything is about money and power.]_

She supposed she'd always had the power to do it. But never the courage. She'd been too afraid of losing everything, and that had been her problem. As bitter as she acted, as glacial as she was, she wasn't immortal. She was afraid of losing, and she had a hell of a lot to lose.

_[Royal flush, full house, two pair, straight.__ Three of a kind, one pair, nothing, nada, zilch.]_

Work with me, sis. We could do great things together. Raines is about as powerful as a fly right now, and if…

'I want Jarod out of the picture,' Lyle had told her. 'Permanently.'

'Go fish,' she'd said.

_[Aces and eights, dead man's hand.]___

She'd made the decision then; a decision of weary eyes and aching bones and now, in the cold chill of the morning, a decision of a bullet wound bleeding consequence.

It wasn't just acceptance anymore. It was weakness, betrayal, damnation. She would pay for her actions with her head held high, no regrets.

You had to be willing to put your chips on the table before you could play to double or nothing.

_[A battle of the wits, everything resting on chance.]_

Jarod had helped her, of course. Knight in shining armor, carrying the world on his shoulders as an unfair handicap while he fought battles he had no business in fighting.

She didn't deny it of him. It was his world, more so than hers.

_[Blackjack was another joke. Get your score to twenty one. Don't go over or you're bust, you're broke. Sit too soon and you lose it all. If by some fluke you get your magic number - a picture card, and an ace, (he's your friend, eleven or uno) – the dealer might get it too, so push, and the house will get its own back in the end anyway.]_

They thought they'd done it. Everything had gone to plan in their eyes, but they didn't have eyes in the back of their head, no one did.

Jarod couldn't have simmed it and even she who thought the worst (Murphy's Law) had been blind to cold opportunity. They had known their enemy wouldn't go down without a fight.

What they hadn't seen was that in their world, everything came at a price.

_[Security was a distraction. Just when you thought you'd won it all, you'd have to pass it over. The one handing out the cards always got the credit.]_

Lyle had forever defied reason. It was one of those things that made sense in a twisted way; ashes to ashes, dust to dust. As one twin fell, the other got dragged down too, and she wondered how she hadn't seen that he'd never have left her behind.

_[Even the experts can't catch every bluff; it's a matter of fact.__ You'd fold if you were smart enough, but people don't like admitting defeat.]_

She coughed, and winced as pain sliced up her side. When her cell rang, she didn't curse as she once would have done. She searched for the device and snapped it open; threw her head back and pressed it to her ear.

'What?' she asked, breathing erratic and she knew she didn't have long left.

'If you had have known…'

He paused, and she could hear, feel his hopelessness as her own, stronger than the white hot pain and poison of the most venomous kind seeping through her veins like wildfire.

It was the poison of acceptance, healing and freedom, and she knew it would be the one to claim her.

_[The Centre was like that. An elaborate house of cards, waiting to be knocked over if someone blew with just the right force at just the right point. Little-pig-little-pig-let-me-come-in-not-by-the-hair-of-my-chinny-chin-chin-I'll-huff-and-I'll-puff-and-I'll-blow-your-house-down.]_

'If you had have known it could never have worked… would you still have done it? Would you have sacrificed everything, knowing your efforts were futile? Knowing that it could only end one way?'

'Yes,' she told him, without hesitation, and that was the moment when her voice was the strongest, her mind was the sharpest and her vision was the clearest. She held onto it and its truth and certainty like a life line, still fighting the battle long after the war had been lost.

Right down to her last breath, she'd be fighting.

_[But nothing was ever that easy.]_

'Why?' he asked, and she could hear the years in his tone.

'Because it's what I do. Because I'm not like you, Jarod. Because I can't spend my life running. I stand and I fight.' She stopped, closing her eyes as her vision swam, then continued, never able to get quite enough air into her lungs but not yet ready to throw down her sword. 'Because I needed to be able to say I'd tried. Because it was worth it.'

'Was it really worth it?' he asked. 'Was all… this… worth it?'

He was in pain. Not in the physical sense, as she was, but internally, emotionally, mentally. She was in that world with him and she understood it. She'd known it as a little girl and those kinds of things never left you behind. That kind of pain cut deeper than any wound could. It hurt, and the scars stayed with you forever.

_[The deck's rarely stacked in your favour. Even when it is, it doesn't mean much. You blink, and you lose it all.]_

'Jarod, if you had have known it would have worked… would you have still done it?'

'You know I would have. It's why I did it.'

'_That's_ what makes it worth it.'

The agony was borderline unbearable, and the metallic taste of blood invaded her mouth as she bit through her lip without realizing. The world was a foggy mirror, a blur of watercolours, a mobile spinning too fast and she felt like she was on a rollercoaster, speeding by and she couldn't see what was happening anymore. The rollercoaster missed its stop, paused mid-loop-the-loop. Screaming, giddy and scared at once, and the expectation was too much. Anticipation, because she knew she was about to crash. Hard.

_[When you were playing with someone else's deck, by someone else's rules… ]_

'If I had have known, I wouldn't have done it. What we had; it was never perfect. But it was something. It was better than nothing. I would have put up with it all, if only -'

'If only,' she murmured, half affectionately, half wryly. 'And that, Jarod, is what makes you and I different. It always has.'

'Everyone has dreams, Miss Parker. Everyone gets… gets crushed when they realize they'll never come true. I can't help but think of all the what ifs.'

'It's not about the dreams, Jarod. It's not about the unattainable. It's about the truth. It's about survival. They can kill you, or set you free and it all depends on how you use them. We both lived on dreams, but we've never been the same. You survive because you hold on to yours; you pursue them and you believe in them no matter what. I survived because I tamed them. I pretended they never existed, and that's what kept my head above the water.'

'Things… things were never meant to be this way,' he said, and she could tell he said it because he knew.

He knew that this was it. He knew he'd seen right; it was never going to end their way. He knew he'd never speak to her again, and there were words he'd never gotten to say and for the first time, he was realizing that it was possible for it to be too late, and that some unfinished business may never come to an end because it simply wasn't possible.

_[Every move was a gamble.]_

'Life never happens the way we want it to, Jarod,' she responded, and it came out as a half groan because she doubled over, jaw clenched and a blinding white light erupting behind her eyelids and rendering her oblivious to her own existence for a few seconds that seemed like centuries and a day.

'I never thought winning could hurt so much.'

She considered saying goodbye, then decided against it because that would mean breaking their unspoken set of rules, and to her, that was as good a betrayal as any.

_[Life was about knowing when to cut your losses.]_

'Don't do it alone,' he said, a silent plea in her ear that brought her back down to earth and she hit, rollercoaster crashing into the ground and her world was a sea of muffled cries and sharp steel digging into her skin. 'Nobody… nobody deserves to…'

_Nobody deserves to die alone, _but he couldn't say it, because he refused to believe it was the end.

_Unwilling to accept the worst, Jarod.__ Some things will never change._

'I have to,' she replied, and she terminated the call and threw the phone at the opposite wall with all the strength she had left, barely waiting for the impact before she allowed the tears to fall.

Hot and salty, they cleared a path of creamy alabaster skin through a terrain of smudges of dirt and ash. She hadn't said sorry, either, and wondered if that had been a mistake. It hurt more than not saying goodbye. It always had.

_[There's always going to be cheaters. Those who don't play by the rules and you don't always see them coming.]_

Eyes wet and stinging like hell, face black and sooty and the skin of the sweeper she had scratched embedded under her fingernails. She couldn't see her own blood on the black material of her clothes but she felt it, warm and sticky, and it stained her hands as she clutched at the wound in her side.

Ironic, she thought. She would die with blood on her hands, but the blood was her own. She'd fought with everything she had – an army of anger, vengeance, bitterness and ferocity, with a prayer of hope and a shield of love – against the Centre. What she hadn't anticipated was fighting herself. She was her own victim.

Her own sacrifice, and for what?

_For everything I left behind_, she answered silently, for she couldn't have spoken if she wanted to, teeth gritted as the pain washed over her, torturing her with the close yet faraway lure of numbness as her grip loosened with every passing second.

_For __Sydney__ For Broots. For Debbie. For my mother. For Ethan, and for my baby brother._

She never added Jarod, because it wasn't true, and she'd done lying to herself. He'd never get his happily ever after. They'd been doomed from the beginning, and they'd lifted the curse too late to save themselves.

_[Those that are good enough at the game get away with something, even if it's knowing that you lost as well. When you've been playing for that long, you know how to make defeat worth every cent.]_

_If you had have known it could never have worked… would you still have done it? Would you have sacrificed everything, knowing your efforts were futile? Knowing that it could only end one way?_

Once upon a time she may have answered in the negative. She, like Jarod, may have opted to remain with the status quo rather than to stand and watch their world crumble to pieces while they were left, helpless and unable to do anything to prevent it, on the sidelines. But that would have been a time when she hadn't known who she was, and if she had, she'd denied it. Nothing like that mattered anymore. Yes, she'd fallen, just like her mother. She was going to go down, because she'd tried to make a difference.

But she'd taken the Centre down with her, and that was what made it worth it.

_I never thought winning could hurt so much._

'Welcome to Vegas, Jarod,' she muttered weakly, her aches slowly receding and her head feeling light.

'One way or another, the house – always - wins.'

-exitus-


End file.
